Blogeurism

That's my new word. It's a combination of "blogging" and "voyeurism." Because it occurred to me this morning, as I was perusing random blogs and in some cases delving in deeply to the lives of people I don't even know, that this is merely voyeurism, except that I guess we're all sort of asking for it, if we're posting our lives on the web for everyone to see.

Personally, I find ordinary people way more fascinating than celebrities. I mean, I'll go to Gawker and stuff, probably more often than the next person, but reading about where Lindsay Lohan partied last night doesn't give me the same frisson of excitement that discovering in some random dude's blog that his favorite quote from a movie ever is the same as mine, or that the girl who writes She Just Walks Around With It has the same pair of sneakers that I do (only in a different color). I suppose this is because most days, I feel like the biggest fucking dork on the planet; I feel like no one I spend my day with (mainly coworkers, but sometimes family and friends) likes any of the same things I like or has any of the same opinions I do or has any of the same interests that I do. And so it's nice to know that I'm not THE biggest dork, but only one of many big dorks.

Some of the best things I've read about in random blogs lately:

1). Small-town Alberta teenagers cruising the highway over to the next town to pick a rumble with some kids over there that they don't get along with. (For some reason, there are a LOT of Canadians on Blogger.)

2). There's a woman who writes about the 100 reasons why she hates her husband. I think initially it was supposed to be kind of funny and maybe even tongue-in-cheek, but now it's gotten depressing. Depressing, but fascinating just the same.

3). I love photo bloggers! My favorite is this guy up in northern Ontario who keeps posting all these photos from an Inuit school project. (Again with the Canadians!)

4). There's this other guy who likes to post his responses to surveys similar to the stupid ones people fill their MySpace pages with, but these surveys are extra complicated, asking questions like "Steve McQueen or Marlon Brando?" And then he always throws in a paragraph's worth of explanation for his answer.

5). The guy who writes about which of his American friends he had dinner with that night. I'm not even sure where he's from -- he writes in English, but seems to be from Europe.

I'm always saddened, though, by the ones that are just like the shitty, pointless diaries we all kept in third grade. "Woke up, went to work, had a salad for dinner, talked the phone." Why does this need to be immortalized on the internet? I wouldn't even immortalize such things in my HEAD.